TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE: Salvation Army Captain John Greholver was brought on board to sort out the financial problems plaguing the Carpinteria rehab center. Though he helped it break even the last three months, the turnaround came too late to save the center and its valuable detox beds.

Salvation Army Rehab to Close

86 Rehab Beds to Be Lost

Thursday, February 26, 2009

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Barring a $15 million dollar miracle, Santa Barbara’s largest residential rehabilitation center for men with substance-abuse problems will disappear from the county March 31, along with 41 full-time jobs and a popular Milpas Street thrift store that helped sustain the center for 18 years. Because the Salvation Army’s 86-bed Adult Rehabilitation Center (ARC) is one of only four residential rehabilitation centers in the South County, and free of charge, its imminent closure was triggering serious angst in Santa Barbara’s recovery community last week. Penny Jenkins, president of the Council on Alcohol and Drug Abuse (CADA) described the loss as devastating.

“It’s a very unfortunate thing that this would have to happen,” said Dawn Marks, marketing consultant for the Salvation Army’s Western region ARC Command. But, she said, as the facility operated at a deficit for years, requiring infusions of cash from profitable ARC operations, it became unsustainable. Donations are declining everywhere, and other ARC programs can’t offset Carpinteria’s deficits any longer, she added.

Major Michael Dossey, general secretary of the Salvation Army’s Western regional ARC Command, broke the news to the clients and staff last Wednesday. Adam Poe, a program supervisor who graduated from the program in 2005, said the 64 men in various stages of their six-month recovery programs were initially anxious about their futures. Yet when they were assured of a slot in another ARC facility, much of that worry was allayed, he said.

But the concerns of Santa Barbara’s recovery community won’t be dispatched so easily. Mike Foley, executive director of the South County’s main homeless shelter, Casa Esperanza, said the closing will result in more men with alcohol and drug problems on the street.

“It’s not going to have an effect on detox beds, it’s going to have an effect on what happens to addicts after [they] detox,” Foley said. Some will be forced to go straight into sober living homes like New House II and III and the Light House. These privately run nonprofit homes provide sober living environments for recovering addicts in outpatient treatment and to graduates of residential programs like ARC and The Rescue Mission. But they don’t offer rehabilitation and can have little structure.

“Anytime you lose residential slots it’s going to be a problem because some people need it. Long-term residential treatment isn’t just about the addiction, it’s about life skills,” Gabbert said.

John Gabbert, senior program manager at The Rescue Mission, which has 61 long-term residential rehab beds for men and 24 for women, predicted greater pressure on the sober living homes.

“Anytime you lose residential slots it’s going to be a problem because some people need it. Long-term residential treatment isn’t just about the addiction, it’s about life skills,” Gabbert said.

Veteran Project Recovery counselor Isabel Blagborne said ARC was the perfect program for people for whom nothing seemed to work, who bounced in and out of sober living homes until they finally got to ARC.

By Salvation Army policy, the ARC programs must sustain themselves through their thrift-store businesses. The Carpinteria facility was funded through sales at its three thrift stores-the Milpas Street store and two in Ventura County. (A fourth Oxnard store closed last summer due to a lease change.) Though the Milpas store is profitable, the Carpinteria facility lost around $10 million over 19 years, said its new administrator Captain John Greholver. Now, in a cruel twist, its two buildings on Cindy Lane need two million dollars worth of repairs-including new plumbing and heating in the men’s quarters and entirely new electrical wiring in the warehouse where donations are delivered, sorted, and sent off to stores.

Ironically enough, Greholver, who was transferred to the facility specifically to turn its finances around, has managed to make the place break even in the last three months. It is apparently too little too late, however. Western Territory ARC Command Major Michael Zielinski said only $15 million could pay off debts to other programs and fund building repairs.

Other Salvation Army services, like meals and sober and mental health housing at the Chapala Street Hospitality House, are unaffected by the closing.

The Carpinteria-based ARC has graduated roughly 125 men a year from its program with a 25-percent success rate-favorable compared to other rehab programs.

Poe, who will be unemployed next month unless another ARC facility has an opening for him, was coming out of a 15-year addiction to meth and alcohol when he was arrested for battery. After two months in Santa Barbara County Jail, he was given the option of entering long-term recovery at ARC and took it. “It was the best thing that ever happened to me,” he said.

The current manager is managing to break even in these worst of times; and the guy who preceded him allowed the facility to lose 10 million dollars over 19 years?

I'd say that's worthy of an investigation and I hope it's already well underway. Something's fishy at the Salvation army; and it's not only the restaurant that now occupies their former location on lower State Street.

For example; take the Taj Mahal looking structure that they built on Chapala Street. Pretty damn classy for a Salvation Army Building. One has to wonder how much excess money went into its construction that would have been better spent elsewhere.

I wonder about this. The Salvation Army has been one of the top revenue-raising charities in the United States, or within a place or two of the top for many years. Combining charitable fundraising, governmental grants, and other revenues, the Salvation Army pulled in $1.3 billion from private sources, $2.8 billion total, in one recent year.

In 2004 they got a bequest of $1.5 billion from the estate of McDonalds heiress Joan Kroc. Where does that go? Where does the bell-ringer money go? Why can't they bail out this program and make it work? Why does it have to be self-sustaining? Something doesn't smell right to me.

I would like to know who usually funded the operation, and where that money will go now? Was it just Salvation Army, or were major donations involved?

I doubt anyone knows the answer, but I can't help but wonder if big donors don't want a successful rehabilitation program in Carpenteria because they're afraid of attracting "dangerous" addicts to the area.

People need to realize that alcoholics and people with addiction are all around us. We need to accept that before we can ever deal with these societal problems on a serious level.

The absence of programs like this just leaves more people out on the streets, unable to find the help they so desperately need.

I know nothing about the finances of the organization, and, if there was fiscal malfeasance, then it should be investigated and prosecuted, if appropriate.

I just want to say that a close family member of mine several years ago needed to utilize the services of the Salvation Army, and it is the only non profit entity to which I donate money each year.

They may have saved my loved one's life, and it is a tragedy that they will no longer be a support system to human beings who are struggling to maintain their dignity and self of worthiness just to keep on living, in some cases. Sobriety cannot achieved without support systems. That is a major vacuum that needs to be filled.

WRT to comments about the "Taj Mahal" - I don't know the particulars, but, in SB, new buildings must conform to community standards, not only in quality of construction, but aesthetic appearance. Having been involved in such an endeavor in the past, I am sure the Salvation Army would have settled for less if they had the option.

But is that what is even important about this?

What will happen to the persons the SA serves? The City should consider that, as it will eventually become their/our problem.

For those of you who are more concerned with how the Salvation Army spends its donation money instead of the fact that the county is losing a vital resource in the ongoing struggle of rehabilitation, look up Forbes magazines article on non-profit organizations. The Salvation Army is always in the top ten organizations in dollars into program ratios.

I am the current Administrator of The Salvation Army Rehabilitation Center in Carpinteria, and have some responses to the comments made here.

1) I have worked for and with a number of non-profits over the years, and have modeled their bookkeeping and financial procedures on The Salvation Army. The integrity of this organization is superb and I am proud to be a part of it.

2) We are careful to honor our doner's intent and to use their donations with integrity. The Kroc donation made several years ago was restricted to be used only for building major recreation centers for underprivileged youth across the nation. 99% of the Salvation Army units will never see a dime of that donation.

3) The Carpinteria center has been a marginal operation over the last 20 years under a number of different administrators. There are 24 ARC centers across the West that help each other out, and the Carpinteria center had to rely on them. The centers conduct a highly successful spiritually based program that can only be privately funded through the donation of goods and sales in the Thrift Stores. They must pay their way because there is simply not enough money out there to fund the rehab program (which is free to the men and women who have few other options). This center costs 3M per year to operate, which works out to about $125 per bed per night, which is very cheap for a very successful rehab program. Unfortunately, it sometimes operated at a loss of over 500K per year. The Salvation Army is unable to sustain that kind of loss in this climate because many of the other ARC centers are now just barely making it.

The decision was made this past fall when there was simply no money to sustain operations at Carpinteria (or another center in Colorado). Even though we were operating in the black Nov-Jan, there was no guarantee that it would continue.

Other ARC centers will now continue to take residents from the local counties. It is sad, yes, but it is the only way that The Salvation Army can continue to provide significant services to this and other areas.

The SB community needs to rally around the facility. The Electricians' Union, The Carpenters' Union, and The Laborers' Union and others in the community can provide the needed man power to repair the facility. Construction materials could donated, paid for thru community grants/donations. Local engineering and architectural firms could provide the planning. It just takes one person in the community with vision and passion to turn this around.